Hungarian author László Krasznahorkai has won the 2015 Man Booker International Prize. The British literary honor, which comes with a £60,000 purse, is presented every two years to a living author whose work is originally published in English, or has been translated into English. Krasznahorkai, chosen from a short list of ten, is the sixth winner of the prize.
The Man Booker International, not to be confused with the Man Booker (which is awarded annually and which will be given to the 2015 winner in October), has previously been awarded to authors such as Chinua Achebe (2007), Philip Roth (2011) and Lydia Davis (2013). Krasznahorkai, who may be best known for his 1985 book Satantango--which was made into a same-titled 1994 film by director Bela Tarr--has won a number of other awards, including Hungary's top literary honor, the Kossuth Prize.
PW called Krasznahorkai's most recent book, Seiobo There Below, which was published in paperback by New Directions in September 2013, a "torrent of hypnotic, lyrical prose." In his 2006 book, War & War--it's about a former clerk from Budapest who arrives in New York City intending to post online a manuscript he's found, and then commit suicide--we said he "aims for unsettling irresolution and nails it in a way reminiscent of Kafka."
Chair of the judges panel, Marina Warner, said Krasznahorkai is "a visionary writer" who "captures the texture of present day existence in scenes that are terrifying, strange, appallingly comic, and often shatteringly beautiful."
